


The Brave

by someonestolemyshoes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Implied Character Death, brief mentions of violence for, snk 82, snk 82 spoilers, ya know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 01:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7146392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonestolemyshoes/pseuds/someonestolemyshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are not brave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Brave

**Author's Note:**

> idk man i am sad and i needed to do something

You are not brave. 

You tell yourself so, with your face in the mirror and your nails digging crescents into the palms of your hands, and you say it like a mantra in the moments when the world is quiet enough to let you think.

You are not brave; you are young and you are _foolish_ , and you spit words like venom through the tears you wouldn’t shed if you were strong enough to stand and fight like the rest.

You are weak, with buckling knees and shaking legs, too feeble to keep your body up straight and your head held high.

You are a coward. You are nothing but a boy - a _child_ \- armed with weapons that kill and fingers that tremble too much to use them. You sit and you watch with wide, leaking eyes and all you can think is how you wish you could be anywhere else.

You have brains, that’s what they all tell you. They tell you that you can plan and you can scheme and that they can do the rest. They make you feel important, if for the briefest time, when they turn to you - the coward - for an idea, for a way out. They make you feel useful, like you might not be so expendable after all.

But you are not brave.

You are still afraid. Always filled with the kind of raw, saturating fear that drums your heart against your ribs and snatches breath from your lungs. You wonder if the others are scared, too; they never look it, not in the same way it feels inside of you. They look determined, resolved, and you wonder if you are the only one who doesn’t deserve to be here.

You stand before gun and cannon with the same quaking fear bubbling within you. You stand and you speak - you scream, or your voice will shake - and as you salute you understand that the foreign feel of it means it does not belong to you.

* * *

 You grow - you learn to work past the fear, learn to run on knocking knees and clumsy feet, and you see things and do things you’d never thought possible but still you are not brave. You aren’t like the rest of them. You learn to cope, because learning is what you’ve always done best, but you know that coping isn’t going to work forever.

You are desperate, tired and bloody and nearing hopeless, the last time you tell yourself you are not brave. You are telling him, too, and somehow it’s an awful lot harder to admit it to somebody else and it comes out around a nervous bubble of laughter. _I’m not all that brave_ , you say, and more words blunder out before you can stop them; words that fight off any argument he might have and you steel yourself with hardened eyes and frowning brows. _So whatever happens, you have to stick to my strategy_.

For the first time, you are not afraid. You are resolved and you are determined and you are _strong_ , with steady hands and even breaths and your heart threads in your chest like a war drum. It gives you away, you know it; it’s impossible he cannot hear it, the march of your approach, and even as he turns to face you - he’s _monstrously_ large, and the heat is already burning - you are not afraid.

You are not a coward. You know the outcome - there isn’t a single part of you that doesn’t understand what is about to happen - but there is no fear. All you feel, even as the huge, glaring eyes grow hard, cold, match every ounce of your determination, is the strongest sense of purpose you have ever felt.

You are not weak. You hold firm. Even as the breath in your lungs seers, even as your skin flames, as the heat chars and licks at the deepest parts of you, you do not let go. You do not give in. You are strong, and your faith is unshakable, and it’s only when you can no longer control the grip of your fingers that you let go.

It’s only when you hit the ground that you are scared again. You don’t want to die - nobody _wants_ to die - and the numbness where the burning should be, where the aches and breaks and pure, unbridled _pain_ should be is unsettling. Terrifying. You are afraid - you are barely more than a child and you are dying, and you are _scared_.

But fear, you know now, is not a weakness. Fighting in the face of it, battling when you’re staring your worst nightmare in the face, struggling on even when there is no hope - that is what makes a person strong. That is what makes _you_ strong.

_I am Armin Arlert,_ you say, while the earth shakes beneath you, _and I am afraid. I am afraid of dying, of death, of not knowing what comes next, but I am not a coward. I am not weak._

_I am Armin Arlert, and I am brave._

**Author's Note:**

> rip in peace maybe

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Choices of Others](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7162373) by [Island_of_Reil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil)




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